Not strictly true: if Quirrell both wanted Harry dead and was able to kill him then he would kill him.
It seems to me we have to consider two hypotheses, each of which is problematic:.
Quirrell can’t kill Harry
Quirrell can kill Harry, but Harry is so supremely valuable that Quirrell is willing to risk the destruction of the whole universe (including himself, and all his horcruxes) to keep Harry alive.
Both hypotheses contain a puzzle. If Quirrell is unable to kill Harry, why is that? (One guess: his offering to spare Harry in exchange for Lily’s life created a binding dark ritual, and Quirrell can’t get out of it.) Alternatively, if Quirrell is able to kill Harry, what exactly makes Harry so supremely valuable? Using Harry in a resurrection ritual, or as a puppet ruler of magical Britain, don’t seem to be high enough value when measured against the risk, do they?
My initial thought was that Chapter 101 provides evidence against 1 and in favour of 2: if Quirrell’s problem is an inability to kill Harry, then Quirrell could just let the centaur do the job instead. But then, the Time-Turner evidence means that Quirrell already knows that the centaur’s attempt will fail anyway, so he might as well stop it himself (and stay in Harry’s favour). I still don’t think we can rule out hypothesis 1.
Quirrell said he considered killing Harry at some point, so there are 3 possibilities: 1) he’s lying, 2) there is a dark binding ritual that he doesn’t know about, or 3) there is no dark ritual. Considering his knowledge of dark rituals we can rule out number 2, and since there isn’t a clear reason why he’d tell this specific lie, I’m going to go with 3.
If Quirrell doesn’t want Harry dead then obviously he’d stop the Centaur, and if he does want Harry dead, he wants to do it on his own terms, with nothing left to chance and no loose ends, so again he’d stop the Centaur.
Quirrell might have been referring to his initial plan (as Voldemort) to end Harry’s life back when Harry was a baby. Quirrell/Voldemort could not have known about a dark ritual then, because he hadn’t created it.
I still don’t think the “dark ritual” hypothesis is very strong, because I can’t see why Quirrell would have done it deliberately, so it happened accidentally. It’s not clear whether “accidental” dark rituals are even possible in the HPMor universe, but if they are, Quirrell ought to be more careful to avoid them.
Not strictly true: if Quirrell both wanted Harry dead and was able to kill him then he would kill him.
It seems to me we have to consider two hypotheses, each of which is problematic:.
Quirrell can’t kill Harry
Quirrell can kill Harry, but Harry is so supremely valuable that Quirrell is willing to risk the destruction of the whole universe (including himself, and all his horcruxes) to keep Harry alive.
Both hypotheses contain a puzzle. If Quirrell is unable to kill Harry, why is that? (One guess: his offering to spare Harry in exchange for Lily’s life created a binding dark ritual, and Quirrell can’t get out of it.) Alternatively, if Quirrell is able to kill Harry, what exactly makes Harry so supremely valuable? Using Harry in a resurrection ritual, or as a puppet ruler of magical Britain, don’t seem to be high enough value when measured against the risk, do they?
My initial thought was that Chapter 101 provides evidence against 1 and in favour of 2: if Quirrell’s problem is an inability to kill Harry, then Quirrell could just let the centaur do the job instead. But then, the Time-Turner evidence means that Quirrell already knows that the centaur’s attempt will fail anyway, so he might as well stop it himself (and stay in Harry’s favour). I still don’t think we can rule out hypothesis 1.
Quirrell said he considered killing Harry at some point, so there are 3 possibilities: 1) he’s lying, 2) there is a dark binding ritual that he doesn’t know about, or 3) there is no dark ritual. Considering his knowledge of dark rituals we can rule out number 2, and since there isn’t a clear reason why he’d tell this specific lie, I’m going to go with 3.
If Quirrell doesn’t want Harry dead then obviously he’d stop the Centaur, and if he does want Harry dead, he wants to do it on his own terms, with nothing left to chance and no loose ends, so again he’d stop the Centaur.
Or 4) He considered it, and discarded it because of a dark binding ritual.
Quirrell might have been referring to his initial plan (as Voldemort) to end Harry’s life back when Harry was a baby. Quirrell/Voldemort could not have known about a dark ritual then, because he hadn’t created it.
I still don’t think the “dark ritual” hypothesis is very strong, because I can’t see why Quirrell would have done it deliberately, so it happened accidentally. It’s not clear whether “accidental” dark rituals are even possible in the HPMor universe, but if they are, Quirrell ought to be more careful to avoid them.